Ryan Jones: The World Is Your Oyster

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Intro:
What if the only thing standing between you and a great career was showing up with the right attitude?
In this episode, I talk with Ryan Jones, an elevator pro whose journey started with a little encouragement from his then-girlfriend’s dad and grew into a full-blown career in the trade. Ryan’s story is a reminder that no one starts out knowing everything—but those who bring a desire to learn can go far.
From climbing into escalator pits to reprogramming controllers, Ryan shares the hard-earned lessons, funny moments, and the mindset that keeps him passionate about the elevator industry.

Summary:
In this episode of the Elevator Careers podcast, host Matt Allred interviews Ryan Jones, an experienced elevator professional. They discuss Ryan’s journey into the elevator industry, the challenges and rewards of modernization, the importance of training and mentoring new talent, and the unique aspects of working in this niche field. Ryan shares insights on recruitment challenges, the differences between large and small companies, and what keeps him passionate about the industry. He emphasizes the importance of having the desire to learn and the various career paths available within the elevator trade.

Transcript:
Ryan Jones (00:00)
There’s just so many avenues you can go down. And I know plenty of people that they’ve been in the field for five, 10, 15 years. And they said, well, I think I’m done turning wrenches and they go into the office. There’s just, there’s so many avenues you can go down. Whether that’s in the office or starting your own company or, you know, starting a consulting firm, you know, it’s the world is your oyster whatever you want to put into it.

Matthew Allred (00:24)
Hello and welcome to the Elevator Careers podcast sponsored by the Allred Group. I am your host, Matt Allred. In this podcast, we talk to the people whose lives and careers are dedicated to the vertical transportation industry to inform and share lessons learned, building upon the foundation of those who have gone before to inspire the next generation of elevator careers. When talent is mission critical, call the Allred Group with industry expertise.

top talent and exceptional customer service, you need the Allred group on your side. Your priority is their priority. Call now 404-890-0445. What if the only thing between you and a great career was showing up with the right attitude? In this episode, I talked with Ryan Jones, an elevator pro whose journey started with a little bit of encouragement from his then girlfriend’s dad and grew into a full blown career in the trade.

Ryan’s story is a reminder that no one starts out knowing everything, but those who bring a desire to learn can go far. From climbing into escalator pits to reprogramming controllers, Ryan shares the hard-earned lessons, funny moments, and the mindset that keeps him passionate about the elevator industry. Ryan, welcome to the show.

Ryan Jones (01:43)
Thanks for having me.

Matthew Allred (01:44)
Happy to be here. Yeah, I’m excited. Always, always a pleasure. I enjoy these conversations. I enjoy talking to people like yourself that have interesting, fascinating, just the careers in the elevator industry and the people that do them is a lot of fun for me. Remind me, you’re in Denver, Colorado, right?

Ryan Jones (02:08)
Yep, I’m in Denver. Been in the trade coming up on 10 years now.

Matthew Allred (02:14)
Cool. How did you get started in the first place? What was it that kind of made that happen for you?

Ryan Jones (02:21)
Well, I was dating a pretty girl and her dad was like, hey man, I think you might be able to do this. I provided for my family for however many years and it’s done well for me. So I ended up marrying her, got in the trade and the rest is history, I guess.

Matthew Allred (02:40)
Right now, I mean those family connections work for a lot of people, you know, and even if you have to marry into them to make them family, right, it worked out.

Ryan Jones (02:49)
Yeah, it did, definitely.

Matthew Allred (02:51)
Yeah, had you ever thought of elevators prior to that? Had it even crossed your mind?

Ryan Jones (02:56)
No, they were just a magic box.

That’s it. Never thought about the people who worked on these. Figured it was a general contractor, maybe an electrician or something.

Matthew Allred (03:06)
Yeah, yeah. What kind of work were you doing prior to that?

Ryan Jones (03:11)
Anything from building decks to excavation to general construction. Just trying a few things out before I found what I really wanted to do.

Matthew Allred (03:20)
Gotcha. So when, when did it click? I mean I’m sure there was some question about, I don’t know, do I really want to work on those? I mean you know, these magic boxes.

Ryan Jones (03:31)
Yeah, I mean, it took a couple of years and the first year was, you know, construction, just like, I think, one of the better routes for people to come through, figure out how things work from the ground up. And after that first year, I ended up working on some escalators. That was pretty intimidating.

Matthew Allred (03:46)
Tell me more about that. What’s the most intimidating about those?

Ryan Jones (03:50)
Well, you just see all these stairs and teeth and gears and a lot of heavy machinery and not as many sensors as you think to protect you as like an elevator would. You got to crawl down in these things to clean them out. It was more than I bargained for.

Matthew Allred (04:03)
Right.

at

that point. I’ve heard, you know, they’re different animal, obviously different game, but I get in the Atlanta airport and I’m looking at, okay, there’s about 500 people on this escalator, you know, it’s hauling us to the top of the tunnel. And I’m like, man, if that were to ever break, I mean it’d be nasty slippery slide.

Ryan Jones (04:32)
Definitely, definitely not good.

Matthew Allred (04:34)
Yeah, So, glad I get to have people like you out there working on them, you know, keeping them up and running. And so it sounds like escalators are maybe not your favorite thing.

Ryan Jones (04:46)
No, well, just, I didn’t have much experience on them. I ended up moving back from Salt Lake after I got in the trade and left that venture behind. So it was, um, it was short lived, but I didn’t hate it.

Matthew Allred (04:59)
Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, you just said more than I bargained for. So I was curious, but I’m sure it’s a eye opening experience to crack one of those open and climb down in the pit and who knows what you’re to find down there.

Ryan Jones (05:10)
Yeah, no doubt.

Matthew Allred (05:12)
Yeah. So back from Utah and haven’t really done a lot of escalator since?

Ryan Jones (05:18)
No, never really had the opportunity. You know, busy doing other projects and we have some guys that are really good at escalators and you know, if that’s what they want to do, more power to them.

Matthew Allred (05:28)
I know there’s a lot of them out at, DIA, whatever, right? A lot of areas in and around Denver that I used to live out there 20 years ago. So, ⁓ I’m sure there are, absolutely. So you said it took a couple of years to, for it to click. What was it that kind of, you know, I guess came to life for you was like, yeah, this, this is what I was looking for, even though it

Ryan Jones (05:38)
There’s probably a few more than you remember.

Yeah, I mean, it was a couple years in construction. Then I moved into a modernization department with a guy who was getting ready to retire. You know, just seeing the ins and outs and how you have to make the old work with the new and how it can be a challenge more so than, you know, different than construction. I enjoyed that aspect of making the old stuff run, keeping those going while you’re trying to

put some new stuff in building and figure out how to make old stuff work with these new equipment that you want. You want it to make it smoother. You want to make it look new, figuring out how to make all that happens. It was a lot of fun.

Matthew Allred (06:35)
Yeah, yeah. So it’s a mod kind of came to life for you. That’s cool. I’ve been told that it’s more complex. Obviously, I’ve never done a mod, so I don’t have any experience, but it makes sense to me if you’re trying to marry up old and new and they’re 30 years different and did the controllers even talk to each other? Do they not?

Ryan Jones (06:56)
Make some IO boards. These inputs fire those outputs. You make them talk eventually

Matthew Allred (07:04)
That’s cool. I mean, just because of the creativity, right, that it takes to get the message across. I mean, I guess I didn’t realize you were making the boards and kind of, I guess that’s when they’re talking about prints, right? If you can get the print, then you can, you know, fix anything is what I’ve been told. Is that kind of the same idea?

Ryan Jones (07:24)
So, yeah, it’s a of fun creating circuits and, you know, one of the big ones like fire service overlay, make sure that things are happening. You know, your supervisor gives you a pile of relays and bases. Can you make it work? I guess we have to.

Matthew Allred (07:43)
Yeah, yeah. Well, and obviously you got a team and you’ve got people you can call on. And so as a team, right, if you can’t figure it out, I mean, especially when you’re new, I don’t know at what point they turn you loose on those. I guess once you get your license, but even then there’s gonna be stuff you haven’t seen or don’t recognize. Is that fair to say?

Ryan Jones (08:07)
Oh absolutely. There’s nothing more confident than a fourth year apprentice. You know, he’s seen everything, he knows everything, and then as soon as he turns out, it’s like, man, I need to review this, my contact book and see who knows what again.

Matthew Allred (08:22)
Yeah, yeah, I’m sure. Yeah, just kind of like, you know, no more training wheels. You’re out there, you know, what can you do? Yeah, yeah. So, and that, yeah, I’m curious, how do you approach, you know, the training, the mentoring of apprentices? I’m sure you’ve had a few come through. What to you is most critical to make sure that they’re, you know, ready for that fourth year?

Ryan Jones (08:48)
I mean, as long as they have the want to, that’s the biggest thing. We have a lot of guys that really want to, and it’s definitely appreciated. then some, this is just another job. It’s just one those things where it says, well, I can only teach you so much if you don’t learn stuff on your own. I mean, you get out what you put in, right?

If you want to go home and study these brands and study the manuals, great, you’ll be a huge asset. And if you don’t, some people can get away with it and still prove themselves pretty well without doing that. Yeah the biggest thing for me is you have to want to.

Matthew Allred (09:33)
Sure, for sure. Like in anything, right? But once you have that desire and once you really apply yourself, it just seems like it would open up all kinds of doors, right? You would have knowledge that nobody can force it into you. You’ve got to consume it.

Ryan Jones (09:52)
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, there was plenty of classes offered through different employers on different products. So I recommend people never turn any of those down. It’s feather in your cap. They can’t take away from you.

Matthew Allred (10:06)
Sure.

Ryan Jones (10:08)
That’s a big one.

Matthew Allred (10:35)
What would you say is the most difficult part of the job. And maybe that changes over the years, but ⁓

Ryan Jones (10:42)
For a while it was customer relations. Coming from construction, it’s like, well, a lot of construction language being thrown around. That’s not gonna fly in a fully occupied office building, when you’re talking to nice people in suits and stuff like that. So that was a challenge for sure. And from then just the everyday

you’re going to come up on something where hopefully you can learn from it.

Matthew Allred (11:15)
For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Did you ever have, the customer relations piece ever bite you in the butt? Did you ever have any moments where like, whoops.

Ryan Jones (11:16)
Never a moment.

No, no, there was nothing that really jumped out. I had some mentors who just said, hey, just I understand you’re from construction. Let’s just take a back seat. You know, just follow my lead. OK.

Matthew Allred (11:41)
Nice, nice. Yeah, it’s funny they saw you coming, right? Okay, you’ve been over there. Let’s just have this lesson before we get in front of anybody and we’ll be okay. I mean, probably didn’t take long for you to realize, ⁓ this is a different conversation, right? This is.

Ryan Jones (11:57)
definitely.

Matthew Allred (11:59)
Yeah, yeah, night and day. And like you say, especially, you know, fully occupied, you know, you got people in and out and you’re trying to, yeah, trying to do your work and they’re trying to do theirs. And so it’s a little different world than a completely empty construction environment. Yep. Yep. Tell me about one of the coolest projects you ever worked on. What was it that really stuck out to you?

Ryan Jones (12:27)
Well, we had a, we had a project. It was two towers, four cars per tower, working on traction stuff and the machine, you know, we think of traction cars, normally they’re overhead. Well, these are all basement traction machines and they, the configuration setup was one where you couldn’t pull the machines out of the machine room. You actually had to hoist the elevator above the first floor, stick a beam in the hole.

hoist it up, put it out on the first floor, take it out through the lobby, do the same thing with the new one. Between the logistics and trying to explain to the customer, this is why we’re going to be shutting down this lobby for a few hours this day. It was unique. was unique.

Matthew Allred (13:18)
Sounds very unique. So when you say basement units, not being an elevator expert myself, does that mean the machine rooms in the bottom versus up on the roof? that? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I’m just trying to think what the ropes do, right? Because I’m, I have seen them, you know, kind of up and over and here’s the counterweight. if machine rooms down there, is it just looped a few more times? It still goes up and down or?

Ryan Jones (13:29)
That’s exactly right.

Matthew Allred (13:47)
Or was it something different altogether?

Ryan Jones (13:50)
Yeah, I mean, from the counterweight went up over a shiv down to the drive shiv which is the machine and then back up over a couple more deflectors and out to the car. So a lot more, a lot more cable.

Matthew Allred (13:59)
Interesting. Okay.

I was gonna say it sounds like yeah, a more rope going on for sure. Yeah, that’s interesting. Certainly a challenge and like I say, certainly something you learn from. So I did want to ask you a little bit about, you one of the things that I’ve run into a lot and I think a lot of people do just in the elevator industry, it is a specialty, it is very niche. And so, you know, there seems to be a shortage, certain jobs, certain cities, certain…

time, certain places, whether it’s, I’m gonna hear it all the time from residential companies just having a hard time. What would you say are the challenges that you see when it comes to recruiting new talent?

Ryan Jones (14:46)
Well, I mean, our outreach is there. It’s no longer a secret. You don’t have to know your, you know, your brother-in-law.

Matthew Allred (14:52)
You don’t have to marry into the family to get hired

Ryan Jones (14:56)
No, no, sometimes it does make it easier. So outreach isn’t really the problem. I think some of it is we have trouble explaining what it is we do day to day. Sure, it could be intimidating to a lot of applicants or people who would be applicants. That’s a big challenge. And everyone says, well, man, it’s got to be a tough job. Well, you know, for some people it is, for some people it isn’t. Maybe this is your thing.

Matthew Allred (14:58)
Right. ⁓

Yeah.

Ryan Jones (15:24)
And then through our recruitment process, there is such a long wait period from when you interview to when you may get called. You know, some people find other jobs that they really enjoy. So that’s a candidate that would have been really good. Well, I found something else.

Matthew Allred (15:45)
Yep. No, that makes sense. What would you say is the one, one of the most important attributes that somebody would need to have to be successful to do what you do?

Ryan Jones (15:59)
Again, the want to, and, you know, just basic understanding of tools. you know, there’s nothing more frustrating. like, no, I need this wrench. You know, they hand you a screwdriver or something. I mean, there’s, there’s some, some, some wild folks out there. They just don’t get it. And they did. They just never had that, that upbringing. That’s, that’s okay. It takes all kinds.

Matthew Allred (16:23)
Yeah, some basic skills. Here’s a tape measure. Here’s how you read it, right? Some things like that that work. But like you said, it’s really that want to. mean, even if the person that doesn’t know what a screwdriver is or how to read a tape measure with a want to, they can learn it. They figure it out. Yep. So you worked for some big companies and a smaller, more independent company. What would you say are some of the biggest differences that you’ve noticed?

Ryan Jones (16:51)
Well, I mean, the bigger companies, offered more training on their products because, know, it’s national or international companies most of time that, you know, they want people to install their stuff and install it well. So that’s something I really appreciated. And then, you know, smaller companies, when you call into the call center, oh, hey, Ryan, how’s it going? It’s not, oh, can I get your employee ID number? Sure. So that’s, a big one for me, just the…

the culture of everyone is on the same team. We have the same goal in mind. That’s important.

Matthew Allred (17:27)
Yep, and I do hear that. Just like I said, the culture, the community, the camaraderie, just like I say, knowing you’re on the same team. So very cool. What would you say makes the elevator industry unique compared to other trades? Obviously, you’re often rubbing shoulders with or bumping into all kinds of trades on construction sites or…

Ryan Jones (17:55)
Yeah, no doubt about it. There’s just so much to do in this, in this trade, you know, whether it be stacking rails, building cars, things, pulling wire, terminating wires, wiring things up, troubleshooting, adjusting. But then there’s, you know, the side of, well, are you going to be the hydraulic guy? You know, deal with more tank units and stuff like that. Or you want to be a traction guy?

And then there’s, you know, even Lula’s residential lifts and there’s just so many avenues you can go down. And I know plenty of people that they, you know, they’ve been in the field for five, 10, 15 years and they said, I think I’m done turning wrenches and they go into the office. There’s just, there’s so many avenues you can go down. Whether that’s in the office or starting your own company or, you know, starting a consulting firm, you know, it’s.

The world is your oyster, whatever you want to put into it.

Matthew Allred (18:52)
It’s wide open, I said, especially as you dig in, you feel comfortable, you feel confident. I mean, yeah, you could do all kinds of consulting, inspecting, whatever the case may be, whatever you like. it sounds like it’s never boring, right? There’s always something new to learn. There’s always something different to do. Seems like it definitely keeps you engaged and yeah, and not bored.

⁓ yeah. Well, it’s got to, right? Because it’s high risk, right? If you’re not on your toes, you might end up losing one or worse, right? You got to be paying attention. Yeah. What would you say keeps you passionate about the industry?

Ryan Jones (19:22)
It’ll keep you on your toes.

I’d say just that. I mean, there’s always something new to learn. You’ve gone through the field and you feel like maybe that’s not your thing. And you’d like to learn maybe the business side of it. Or if you go through and you say, you know what, I feel like I really got a grasp on this. And maybe I’d like to give back and kind of teach in our industry as well. There’s just so many options you have.

Matthew Allred (20:07)
Yep. Absolutely. So as we’re kind of getting towards the end of our time here, last question I want to ask is what advice would you give to somebody who’s either brand new or maybe they’re just considering, maybe they’re on the fence just thinking, is that something really that I really want to do?

Ryan Jones (20:24)
Yeah, I mean, the thing I’d sell my new apprentice is the same. You’re not expected to know anything. I need you to know some wrenches, basic hand tools, but I don’t need you to know how to work on an elevator, build an elevator. That’s okay. That’s what you’re expected to do. I just need you to be here and want to. That’s it.

Matthew Allred (20:46)
That’s cool. I mean, it’s obviously a huge thing to just show up, have the right desire, right? And the fact that you’re not expected to know everything is probably a good thing, right? Otherwise, you’d get somebody who’s, you know, I know how to do this, right? Only to mess something up or…

Ryan Jones (21:04)
Yeah, we’ve had those people.

Matthew Allred (21:07)
Haha

I imagine you have had some of those people and maybe it doesn’t last super long if they can’t learn to be humble enough to be taught.

Ryan Jones (21:20)
Yeah, learning how to learn is really important in any aspect of life, I think.

Matthew Allred (21:26)
Yep, absolutely. Anything else you want to share before we close out?

Ryan Jones (21:32)
Not too much, you know, final words. Just you get out what you put in.

Matthew Allred (21:39)
Well said, well said. Ryan, thank you so much for being with me today. I appreciate it.

Ryan Jones (21:43)
Thanks for having me.

Matthew Allred (21:44)
Thank you for listening to the Elevator Careers podcast sponsored by the Allred Group, a leader in elevator industry recruiting. Please visit our YouTube channel at Elevator Careers or check us out online at ElevatorCareers.net. Please like and subscribe and until next time, stay safe.